News

Mix: Japan market, Wired, Lufthansa, iPad X-ray

By Charles Starrett ● Friday, April 23, 2010

The iPhone’s market share in Japan has more than doubled in the past year to 72 percent, according to Tokyo-based research firm MM Research Institute. BusinessWeek reports that MM Research estimates shipments of the iPhone climbed to 1.69 million units in the year ending March 31, bringing the total sold since 2008 to 2.3 million. “Last year was just the beginning of the smartphone competition, which is why Apple did so well,” said Calvin Huang with Daiwa Securities Group Inc. in Taipei. “This year will be much more competitive.”

According to stats released by Wired, the iPad now accounts for 26 percent of the site’s traffic from mobile devices. The report states that the rise in iPad usage was matched by a declining share of iPhone and iPod touch usage, suggesting that iPad users were simply “trading up” from a smaller Apple mobile device. Overall, mobile devices account for 2.3 to 3.5 percent of the site’s traffic, with the iPad accounting for 0.91 percent on its own.

German airline Lufthansa has posted an open letter to the Apple engineer who lost a fourth-generation iPhone prototype—later pictured online—at a German beer garden in California, offering him a free flight to Germany. The letter acknowledges how “frustrating” it can be to loose personal belongings, and that the company noticed his interest in German beer. In offering the flight to Munich, the company suggested he visit Lufthansa’s new Bavarian Beer Garden Business Lounge, and “experience the best that Germany has to offer.”

A doctor living in Japan has x-rayed his newly-acquired iPad and posted the resulting image online (Translated Link). While the view of the x-rayed iPad isn’t greatly different from previous teardown images posted by the FCC, it does allow one to see the entirety of the device’s components in their proper positions at once, and once again makes clear just how prominent a role the battery plays in the iPad’s internal design.